Thomas Sears Huffaker (1825-1910) = Methodist Missionary. Postmaster. County Commissioner. Probate Judge. Kansas Legislator. Born on March 30 to Catherine (Lowe) and George Smith Huffaker, an ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal South church in Clay County, Missouri.
Eliza Ann Baker was born in Illinois to Agnes (Inghram) & blacksmith, Joshua W. Baker in 1836, raised in Iowa and married Thomas on 6 May, 1852 at the age of 16 in Council Grove by a missionary traveling to Mexico, one Rev. Nicholson.
Previous to their marriage, in 1850, Thomas was sent to Council Grove, Morris County, Kansas as a missionary to teach the Indian children by the Methodist Episcopal South Board of Missions after he taught at the Shawnee Manual Training School in Johnson County for two years. Few Indians allowed their children to attend the Kaw mission school, so the mission closed within a few years. After awhile, when settlers began to settle around and in Council Grove, he taught the children of those settlers and began a Sunday School there. In addition to teaching, he engaged in a mercantile business, farming and raising farm stock.
They lived at the mission until a new fourteen room house was built for their family, eventually numbering twelve members, one quarter mile north of the mission. Thomas and Eliza celebrated their fifty-third anniversary there. After her father passed, a daughter, Anna Carpenter, sold her home on Second Street and moved to the mission in 1911 with her mother (1836-1920), living there until her death in 1921.
Both Thomas and Eliza were buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Council Grove, Kansas.
More to Read:
1. Some Boone Descendants and Kindred of the St. Charles District. By Lilian Hays Oliver. Chedwato Service, 1964. p. 267-270. Repository: Midwest Genealogy Center, Independence, MO.
2. "Old West Kansas." Kansas Heritage website
3. History of the State of Kansas. By William G. Cutler. A. T. Andreas, Chicago, IL, 1883. p. 805-806. Repository: Google Books.
4. Kansaspedia. Kansas Historical Society website
5. "Homer Huffaker." A Standard History of Oklahoma. by Joseph Bradfield Thobum. Vol. 5. p.2133-34. Repository: Google Books.
6. Photo of the Kaw Mission in Council Grove, Kansas. Kansas Memory.
7. Thomas Sears Huffaker, Ancestry.com
8. Findagrave #20168737
Places to Visit:
1. Santa Fe Trail Historic Markers from Independence, MO to Council Grove, KS.
2. Shawnee Indian Mission Historic Site & Museum, 3403 W. 53rd, Fairway, KS.
3. Kaw Mission State Historic Site, 500 North Mission, Council Grove, KS.
Biography written by Dolores J. Rush. Updated: 10/27/2019.
Biography written by Dolores J. Rush. Updated: 10/27/2019.
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